Endpoint Management Community Blog

Increase Notification Server Performance by Regularly Deleting Temporary and Log Files

Andrey Shipov | 27 Jun 2008 | 1 comment

We have Altiris Notification Server with a few solutions for about 15 months now. Currently NS manages 1500 client PCs. Altiris provides great solutions and they are very easy to modify for your environment. But a few months ago I discovered two problems that took me some time to investigate...

The first problem was quite easy and straight forward:

IIS log files were in the region of 8 Gb. One day I received an alert message that Notification Server hosting machine is running out of space on the drive C:\.

After looking at folders and files size I have found that IIS log files were in the region of 8 Gb. These log files are created by IIS, but are never deleted.

I have asked people who have more knowledge in IIS than I do and they told me that there is no mechanism in IIS to automatically...

How to Delete Old Machines in Deployment Server MSDE Database

marcoads | 20 Jun 2008 | 2 comments

Do you have unnecessary machines that are not in use, but are still present in the MSDE database in your Deployment Server? Is there a way to clean them out?

This is a script that will allow the user to clean all old machines manually from the MSDE database. Go to Deployment Server 6.5 build > Tools > Options, then check the box to clean out old computers by date range.

There is a SQL script you can run in Query Analyzer that will clean out computers that have not reported inventory in 35 days. To use this script just open SQL Query Analyzer from the SQL Administrations tools. Select the eXpress Database then copy the following code into the Query Analyzer window and click run.

DELETE from computer
WHERE datediff(dd,last_inventory,getdate())>35

Here is a sample Deployment Server job...

Domain Join Debug Log

CondorMan | 11 Mar 2009 | 0 comments

If you've ever had a domain join fail, you can understand how frustrating it can be to troubleshoot. There is a log file that will make it much easier to figure out what is wrong.

Open the file C:\WINDOWS\Debug\NetSetup.log.
Go to the very bottom of the file and find the last "NetpDoDomainJoin: status:"
If it is not 0x0, then the domain join failed and the code listed instead of 0x0 is the reason it failed.
Now, look at each previous line in the file until you come across the last line in the file that returned the same failure code as your Domain Join.
You have found the step of the domain join that failed and the reason it failed.

Windows Installer Error Codes

CondorMan | 09 Jun 2008 | 4 comments

Sometimes a Windows Installer will fail with an error 16xx. What does that mean?

You can find out by viewing Microsoft's list of Windows Installer Error Codes and their meanings here. You might want to add that link to your favorites if you manage a lot of .msi installs.

COMPACT.EXE Search Parameters

CondorMan | 05 Jun 2008 | 1 comment

If your workstations are using the NTFS file system, you can use COMPACT.EXE that is included with Windows to compress files with a certain extension. For example, to compress all of the .CHM files (which are rarely used), use the command: COMPACT /C /S:C:\ *.CHM

Here is a list of all the available parameters:

COMPACT [/C | /U] [/S[:dir]] [/A] [/I] [/F] [/Q] [filename [...]]

/C	Compresses the specified files. Directories will be marked so that files added afterward will be compressed.
/U	Uncompresses the specified files. Directories will be marked so that files added afterward will not be compressed.
/S	Performs the specified operation on files in the given directory and all subdirectories...

Faster PXE WinPE 2.1 Boot

Nelo | 07 Jul 2009 | 6 comments

The size of the WinPE boot file looks scary when multiple clients are downloading it in a PXE boot. I have found a way to reduce the size of the boot.wim file to 33% less in size than the boot file that Boot Disk Creator creates and of course it downloads 33% faster. The end result should have a 110 Meg size WinPE boot file.

In order to create a play environment, create a second WinPE PXE configuration, meaning create a MenuOption that will not be the first WinPE. The first WInPE PXE configuration is set by default to MenuOption131. We want to play on PXE MenuOption160 or greater.

Also, this assumes that WAIK is installed in your DS server or the Altiris WInPE 2.1 installers were installed.
One more thing, this example is only for x86 proc. The batch file could easily be configured to make the changes for...

Script to Open Real-Time System Manager

Terry Cutler | 30 Apr 2008 | 1 comment

In connection with Joel's article on Improving Load Performance in Real-Time Systems Manager, the following VBscript provides a shortcut to opening an RTSM page for a system.

REM Use to connect to Altiris system using RTSM

strAnswer = InputBox("Please enter the computer name of the system you wish to manage:","RTSM Quick View")

If strAnswer = "" Then
Wscript.Quit
Else
StrUrl = "http://localhost/Altiris/Resource/ResourceManagerConsole.aspx?Name="&strAnswer
Set objShell = CreateObject("Wscript.Shell")
objShell.Run(strUrl)
End If

For the sample script above, replace localhost with the appropriate Altiris NS server name or address. If LocalHost is used, this assumes the utility is being executed on the local system.

Two example screenshots below provide a...

Monitoring Completion Status of RS Integrity Check or SSM jobs

KSchroeder | 28 May 2008 | 0 comments

Do you ever look at your Recovery Solution job queue and wonder "I wonder how far along that Integrity Check/SSM job is?" Well I did, and was very frustrated since there wasn't a good way I had found to monitor the progress. Well, by using the following Stored Procedure, you too can find out about the progress of the job.

To install this, just load the attached .SQL file into Query Analyzer (or whatever tool is used in SQL 2005), select your Recovery Solution database, and execute it. It will add the spGetRSJobStatus Stored Procedure (SP) to the database. To run the query, just execute the SP from Query Analyzer:

EXEC spGetRSJobStatus

Note: I just attached a NS report you can use to run this without having to fire up Query Analyzer.

Note that this works best for...

Best Way to Test a Package in a Locked-Down Environment

PRASANNA KUMAR RAJA | 18 Apr 2008 | 5 comments

Per machine advertisement followed by installation by a normal user account is the most comprehensive test for this situation. As an administrator use the following command line to advertise the application to the local machine.

Msiexec.exe /jm package.msi ALLUSERS=1 /qb

Then...

Logon with a normal user account and trigger the installation process by running the shortcut or via a file type association. The application should start and run the with no problems at this point.

SQL Parser